Jun.-Prof. Dr. Anina Paetzold

Anina Paetzold joined Heidelberg University in October 2025 as Junior Professor of Popular Music Studies, with a focus on Hip Hop. She holds a doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin, where her dissertation, „Imaginierte Traditionen: Eine diachrone Ethnographie über das Bewahren Performativer Künste in Kambodscha“ (Imagined Traditions: A Diachronic Ethnography on the Preservation of Performing Arts in Cambodia), explored the dynamics of cultural continuity and transformation. After completing her PhD, she taught and conducted research in the field of Popular Music Studies as well as Transcultural Musicology and Historical Anthropology of Music at Humboldt University. She also served as interim lecturer in Cultural Musicology at the University of Amsterdam. Most recently, Anina Paetzold was a Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Fellow. Beyond her academic engagements, she has worked as a freelance translator in the gaming industry and as a project coordinator in refugee support initiatives.

Her research encompasses Hip Hop as well as broader inquiries into the relationships between music, place, and identity; music and dance as cultural heritage and in heritage industries; music and dance in contest formats; cultural policies (particularly during the Cold War); music and dance in Cambodia; and the epistemologies of sound archives.

Academic Profile